MatchCraft
by Cerebrodigital
Summary: Bagheera and Appleslicer are the last opponents remaining from a Last Man Standing Match, and they will try anything to outlast each other.


Unreal Tournament fanfiction No. 12  
  
By Jesus E. Rosas T. (cerebrodigital@hotmail.com)  
  
Title: "MatchCraft"  
  
Main Characters: Bagheera, AppleSlicer.  
  
Location: Terran System, Alpha Centauri Division, HEK7 Sector.  
  
Map name: Gharlinka  
  
It´s necessary to note that Gharlinka is a FacingWorlds-type map, half its size, with two main buildings (the healpod one and the shieldbelt one), joined by two bridges (one over another) over a chasm of lava, and communicated at the top rooms by portals and by the bottom dungeons that run beneath the lava pool. The place is decayed, remains of a former Lakth Council facility, closed thirty years ago, with its middle ramp destroyed and only the supporting poles remaining. Jerl Liandri bought this place on 2359 and decided to leave it that way. He needed real decaying facilities in order to offer realism to a more demanding public ( note from the author ).  
  
Date: March 2361  
  
  
SYNOPSIS: Bagheera and Appleslicer are the last opponents remaining from a Last Man Standing Match, and they will try anything to outlast each other.  
  
  
  
  
"MATCHCRAFT"  
  
  
  
  
Void.  
  
That sensation of numbness in your middle back, as if there were no gravity to hold onto, as if your body was the main pivot center of the universe, turning like moving gears around your vertebrae, your ears sore with the deafening silence of nothingness moving dazzingly in circles, your feet restrained from weight.  
  
A sensation beyond the named "one-dimensional respawn time", that you learned at the Academy, that physical comma between death and respawning, where your mind rules everything and nothing, aware but frozen, colored but grayed out.  
  
And then the flash. And the whistle. And the little coldness at the tip of your nose, all at the same time, almost unreal, like a Dali painting where everything could be suspended in mid air and time and space collapse into an image that is all mind. Like now.  
  
The ripper razor-sharp disc went clank harmlessly on the far wall, just as your upper back slammed fiercely into what your inner ear thought it would be another wall, but came to be the ground´s surface, just as your kinetic trained brain told you, right before your left lobe began to spark with sweating activity again.  
  
And one sound knocked fiercely the door of conciousness: and ASMD being armed, a footstep back to hold oneself, the thin metallic sound of a well-muffled trigger pulling technique, and the hammerhead bump of the gush of energy heating the air.  
  
It took only hundreths of seconds for bagheera to realize that Appleslicer, who was just a few meters off turning the nearest corner, knew his ricocheting ripper disc hadn´t sliced him open from upper chest to back, and was taking advantage of his now fallen opponent with a quick second attack, this time a sure-fire combo attack that would gib him in a second or so.  
  
Still with only his cervicals touching the floor, bagheera activated his jump boots with a mental command and threw his legs forward in a circling motion (just as those gerth-fighting movies seen on neurovision) in order to stand up, but he launched is body up only 15 degrees so that the slam of his feet on the floor would not send him completely upward (foolingly breaking his own neck against the ceiling) but throwing him out of the back window.  
  
Just as the boots hit the upper bridge he saw the flash hit the blob. Lucky enough, the boot´s quick reaction was out of the question, as they launched him out of the window, but not exactly as he had planned.  
  
He could not avoid the window´s edge to slam into his left shoulder, breaking it, feeling like fire on hell when a bunch of screaming tendons ripped and a bone shard cut the flesh open, leaving a thin parable line of blood along his path through air.  
  
Gritting his teeth he managed to flip his body so he landed on his feet, the jumpoots gone out of energy, and a rocketlauncher-armed Appleslicer was already getting out of the building.  
  
Bagheera dropped his minigun to the floor, grabbed his dangling left arm and, painfully pointing it upwards towards the top of the healpod building, launched his translocator.  
  
Two rockets with his name on them began to fly happily towards his body, but his eyes were still in the translocating device going upward. Appleslicer could not help leaving out a hard laugh as the tip of bagheera´s teleporting disc hit the very edge of the top of the building, thus now falling directly into the lava.  
  
But, fact is, Bagheera wasn´t a 7th Dan for nothing. He faked a face of amazed terror when he turned to a laughing Appleslicer. Then he teleported, the rockets whizzing through the ions of charged static left behind.   
  
Appleslicer thought to himself how dumb this guy is, falling into lava. But his grin quickly disappeared as he saw that the announcer did not yell the death sentence, which meant that bagheera hasn´t died. Running to the place where the disc (and the teleporting bagheera) should have fallen, he saw only lava. He then leaned over the bridge´s edge, just to see blood stains on the lower bridge; bagheera should have got a grip on it as soon as he teleported... The missing translocator launch was a facade!  
  
  
That gave him a chance to... AppleSlicer´s thoughts were cut short by a whistling rocket coming directly at his neck, from above. Those seconds of delay let bagheera take the offensive. But far from surprised, Appleslicer just blasted his body off with a ground-placed rocket, turning 360 degrees, arming the rifle while in mid-air and aiming by pure instinct, putting a bullet through a Bagheera´s abdomen, this one still amazed of how tricky and dexterous this guy was.   
  
He could have been a great 7th Dan, he thought to himself. He is what we need at the Academy. Four minds work better than three, that´s right. If only...   
  
Bagheera´s inner discussion was interrupted by the fact that the duel started 2 to 1 favoring him. Now i´ts 1 to 1. Give or Receive Death. Bagheera waited three full seconds to respawn, his left arm perfectly wound to his body, and his mind letting the hurricane of possible strategies that sprayed through his brain calm down and get the perfect tactic (but usually, nearly impossible one) to unleash.  
  
Bagheera´s strategies were of the impossible kind; but they weren´t impossible; they just looked like that because they almost were. He knew AppleSlicer should be running madly right now towards the ShieldBelt in the other building. Bagheera bet he would be finished if his opponent accomplished that. So he calculated the estimated time quickly (and dodged two strayed rockets that AppleSlicer shot "just in case..."), grabbed the BioRifle and a rocket launcher, and went up to the upper floor of the healpod building, where he had just respawned.   
  
His calculus came for 7 seconds, maybe 8, before AppleSlicer got the ShieldBelt. So he had to get inside the other building in a mere 6 seconds; "impossible to get there running, it would take me at least 15 seconds... The portals are also out of the question, i would spend at least seven seconds just getting up and down by the upmost stairs..." he thought to himself, in the smallest fractions of time. He had already shot the translocator high up and forward from one opening on the wall, towards the sky, and with the biorifle fully loaded he teleported himself like a flash into thin air 12 meters over the upper bridge.  
  
And then he got it.  
  
5 seconds were left when bagheera got the right tactic in his mind. Shooting both the translocator high upwards again and a big blob with his biorifle downwards towards the bridge, he waited another second (still in mid-air) and teleported himself again.  
  
4 seconds remaining. Again in thin air, but only 10 meters off one of the shieldbelt building windows, he waited half a second or so until the blob hit the bridge´s floor. Then the noise of the explosion began. Bagheera needed this to disguise his own sounds during those three seconds. So he shot his translocator once more, aiming carefully, to the window mentioned above, armed the rocket launcher, and teleported one last time.  
  
3 seconds. Dumbass, he thought to himself. A tenth of a second delay flawed the translocator launch calculus and the entering right through the window. So his falling body, still surrounded by ions product of the re-materializing sequence, smashed itself against the rocky wall, and he could hear two ribs crack loudly, just before his left hand grabbed the window´s edge. Think fast again!  
  
2 seconds. "The blob explosion is about to end, AppleSlicer is barely three seconds from getting te belt, and here i am, dangling with one hand over the lava. ¿Do you know the term ´desperate measures´? well, a clear example is this: forget pain, plant your feet on the wall, push yourself upwards and try (i stress try) to get inside the building. And don´t forget to fire a rocket a little down the wall so the blast can push you a little harder".  
  
1 Second left. Health 20%, mainly due to the rocket impact, but finally inside the building, with no time to spare, think or waste. Bagheera was still flipping inwards the main hall, and the last move of a well-named "impossible strategy" was made.  
  
Everything after that happened like a slo-mo dream.  
  
Bagheera landed on his feet, and at the same time he fired a rocket and the translocator towards AppleSlicer, who was barely a meter off his goal. He heard the rocket being fired, and judging from its tone and volume, he did not think it was clear and present danger (as in fact it wasn´t), so he just stopped and turned back slowly, catching bagheera on the corner of his eye, grining like noone else, arming the ripper and wondering how this freak named bagheera had gone so far into the Academy rank and the Tournament being so dumb. Lots of luck, AppleSlicer thought to himself. Well, your luck has ended today, punk.  
  
Bagheera hadn´t moved an inch since he touched the floor. The basso thump noise of his translocator launching had come unnoticed thanks to the mixing of his feet slamming to the ground and the rocket fired. Even the droplets of sweat in his forehead seemed to have frozen. He had it. He had outsmarted Appleslicer, he thought to himself. That stupid 6th Dan botkiller should have grabbed that belt and not have payed attention to his very own pride and self-confidence. Now it´s my turn.  
  
Bagheera´s eyes went sore over those 20 hundreths of seconds that passed before AppleSlicer, not aware of the now falling translocator that came over his head and out of his sight, began to drift his body weight to one side, in order to dodge the upcoming missile. A task as easy as eating candies.  
  
As soon as Appleslicer´s right foot moved backwards the first quarter of inch, bagheera spun violently, giving his back to his opponent, and aiming somewhere near his own feet. Calculations had begun again...  
  
This move seemed very strange to AppleSlicer, but since bagheera was not aiming at him, he didn´t care about it, and let the whistling rocket get past him swiftly towards the wall. Now bagheera´s falling translocator disk was four meters high to the right and back of AppleSlicer; bagheera calculated the elapsed time, angle and location of his opponent now that he had dodged the missile...  
  
...and AppleSlicer fired his ripper.   
  
The razor just went right through ionized air. Bagheera had translocated himself...  
  
The smash of bagheera´s rocket against the wall merged with the noise of his translocation in mid-air. At that precise instant he was three meters off AppleSlicer, with his rocket launcher aiming right at his neck and a rocket just coming right out of it. That was the reason why he adopted that position, with his back towards AppleSlicer, a half second ago. When respawned, he would be aiming right at his back. He calculated angle and timing and had pressed the rocket launcher trigger at the same time that he translocated.   
  
AppleSlicer never understood how Bagheera had managed to do all that. In fact, he didn´t even understand what he actually did. From Bagheera´s last respawn to the match-decisive frag only a mere 18 seconds had passed. That was impossible. Or so he thought on his way back to the Ganymedes mines.  
  
The announcer´s mammoth words pounded on the walls like bagheera´s heart on his wounded ribcage, while the invisible public´s cheer rained on him like his own pouring sweat into the floor.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
NOTES ON THE CHARACTERS (note From the Author)  
  
BAGHEERA is a 32-year-old male Terran, one of the only three 7th Dan Botkillers in the Terran System. He was a distinguished student at the Terran Tournament Academy (TTA) ten years ago, and now is the Chief Counselor of the TTA Deathmatch Campus. Creator of the now popular WitchHunt Match, he is the author of acclaimed digital papers such as "The Complete Guide for Assault Tactics" (Relativity, 2357), "Take your Domination to the Next Level" (Relativity, 2359), "On WitchHunt" (Academy Digitals, 2359) and last year´s bestseller, "Notes on development of 8th Dan Bots - Artificial Intelligence for the training of the near future" (Academy Digitals, 2360), which got him the Breakthrough Development Award of the Academy Confederations on November 16 of that year.  
  
APPLESLICER is a 34-year-old Male Terran that fought in the five battles of Ashtar (2355) before entering the TTA in 2356. There he was condecorated twice, as a Suma Cum Laude 6th Dan Deathmatch student, but he was accused of assasinating a teammate during a siege on the upper layer of Shyam, a planet in the surroundings of the Gharath System, half a lightyear from the limits of the Skaarj Realm. The case was brought to the Terran Courts, and he was strangely found guilty of all charges and sent to the Ganymedes mines for life. Jerl Liandri asked for permission before getting him back into the Tournament Business.   
  
Most of his colleagues and the people that met him agree that he is sometimes an angry man, but he would not be capable of killing a team bud without a very good reason. However, the case was never opened again.   
  
Another interesting fact is his nickname: he got it from a popular exercise on the deathmatch campus: apple slicing, which consisted of 20 apples put in one-meter pods all along a tight-cornered maze. After studying it thoroughly, along with the position and location of the fruits, you should be able to slice them all with a maximum of 20 clean ripper shots (that is, the funny part is that you MUST use the ricochet factor of the razors - you must not see directly the apples you are going to cut) throughout the labirynth. AppleSlicer has the Terran (and most probably the InterPlanetary) record for this task: On February 6th, 2358 he managed to cut through all of the 20 apples with only 8 shots. Hence his nickname. Bagheera (who is sure that Appleslicer would have gotten a 7th Dan) himself needed 14 shots (which is a quite good mark).   
  
  
  



End file.
